Taiwan Earthquake and Regulatory Lapses: Good Business Undermined by Improper Regulation
The Weiguan Jinlong building collapse offers an opportunity to discuss regulatory issues that face all of Asia and much of the underdeveloped world, especially with the recent signing of TPP.
Having buckled in a 6.4-magnitude earthquake, the Weiguan Jinlong building was clearly not up to the task, especially when compared to major earthquake disasters. Looking at the Great Japanese Earthquake of 2011, for example, the 9.0-magnitude tremor lasted almost five minutes with nearly 10,000 aftershocks, including some that were more powerful than the Tainan earthquake. The Earthquake was so powerful it literally pushed the main Japanese island Honshu eight feet away from Asia. Like the Great Japanese Earthquake, the damage done by the Tainan earthquake could have been far worse had the Weiguan Jinlong building been the standard across Taiwan.
When Chile experienced an earthquake 500 times more powerful than the devastating 2010 tremor that leveled Port-Au-Prince weeks earlier, the world was forced to recognize the poor are more likely to die in a natural disaster than the rich without regard to the magnitude of the crisis. Unlike Haiti, Chile had grown accustom to major tremors, thus its building codes were as strict as the US and Japan, yet many newer buildings collapsed during this powerful quake. In the 2009 Padang Earthquake and the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, the most modern buildings collapsed, leaving only older structures standing. Anti-regulation political movements and weak enforcement were responsible in these cases.
